Charles Lamb

Who was Charles Lamb?

Charles Lamb was an English essayist, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced with his sister, Mary Lamb. Lamb has been referred to by E.V. Lucas, his principal biographer, as "the most lovable figure in English literature".

Famous Quotes:

• How a sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated in him as his only duty,
• The vices of some men are magnificent.
• Borrowers of books --those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
• Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see another mountain in my life.
• The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
• Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know.
• A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.
• The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
• For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print... substitute drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in question.
• The beggar wears all colors fearing none.